Tweetie for Mac

This is the first in a series of reviews for Twitter clients on both Mac OS X and Windows. I will post a follow up post on my favorite and why when I finish. Now lets get into it!

Tweetie for Mac is one of the first native and clean Twitter clients for Mac OS X. Atebits has spent several months creating a very much anticipated (for me anyway) desktop client that brings beauty, functionality and simplicity into one package.

Features:

Tweetie does what all Twitter clients should, pull your Twitter updates, and does it well, but it does lack some key features that I would have liked to see. Tweetie has the ability to favorite tweets, but there is no way to un-favorite them or see tweets that were marked favorites on other clients such as the web, TweetDeck, Twhirl, or other popular applications. Another feature it is lacking is the ability to create groups. Groups allow you to only see specific peoples tweets. I wish I could have the ability to turn on auto-follow to increase my number of followers, but not have to see their tweets.

Pros:

Tweetie has a small black box up in Mac OS X's status menu (near the clock and wi-fi indicator) that illuminates blue when new tweets, mentions (@replys), or Direct Messages are received. Also Tweetie includes a searchtool, a URL shortener, and a way to post images with a verity of setting to change and customize your favorite URL shortening service or picture hoster any way you'd like. Another thing that I like, which others may not, is that the "What are you doing" box is located in a separate window, allowing you to have as many thoughts forming to tweets as you'd like. Another upside to this is that you can compose your tweet without seeing the bulky window that is reserved for your friend's tweets.

Cons:

Tweeite is really nice but as I said before, it lacks features such as un-favoriting tweets and creating groups. Also a big downside is that as of May 4th it will cost $19 dollars (it now only costs $14 as an introductory price). But cheer up, because there is a free version that you may use as long as you want, but it is ad-supported. While the ads are not annoying and disappear as time goes by, they are still there and take up room on the Timeline. Also Tweetie doesn't have support for audible notices but the developer has said that Growl support is coming.

Final Rating:

I give Tweetie for Mac a solid 4 stars out of 5 rating because of its elegance and its ability to do the basics well. It also has some features that are important that I didn't talk about such as re-tweeting and small things like that.

Find Tweetie for Mac here

Find a sort demo here

Update: Tweetie 1.1 has arrived and Growl support has been added as well as some other new features.

Comments

[Daniel Brusilovsky]

Hey David,

I'm the Director of PR for atebits, the company behind Tweetie. Just wanted to say thanks for the great overview video. Maybe we can do a giveaway of Tweetie for Mac on your blog/YouTube channel?

Thanks,

Daniel Brusilovsky

[John Costa]

Hey Daniel, I saw your comment and just wanted to let you know that I was actually the guest writer for that post. I love tweetie ever since the iphone days and love the innovation behind it. I'm honored you liked my post and just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you guys over at atebits are doing. Thanks John

[liz]

i use twhirl and will only change to tweetie if they add sounds, which they dont seem to want to do, i work alot on my mac with twhirl on in background and its nice to hear when i have a reply or a new tweet...i give it a 3 out of 5 stars

[John Costa]

atebits posted the preference panel for tweetie 1.1 and it showed Growl support.

[David Banther]

Major CON is no option for audible alerts! I do not understand that.

[John Costa]

Growl support is coming!